Reports of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 exploding aren’t new. However it seems that according to a report from the New York Times, over in China Samsung did not want a video to go public. So much so that the company reportedly tried to “buy” the silence of the handset’s owner, a 23-year Zhang Sitong.
According to the report, Zhang claims that his phone started to vibrate and smoke when he was using it. He then threw it to the ground and instructed his friend to start recording the entire incident, which he then uploaded. However within a day of the video being uploaded, Zhang claims two employees from Samsung showed up at his house and offered him a new Note 7 handset and $900 in compensation to keep the video private, to which he refused.
According to Zhang, “They said there was no problem with the phones in China. That’s why I bought a Samsung. This is an issue of deception. They are cheating Chinese consumers.” Take it with a grain of salt as we can’t be 100% sure if that is what happened and if Samsung really did try to buy Zhang’s silence.
However back in September, Chinese media outlets seemed to be rather upset at Samsung’s handling of the situation, claiming that the way the handled the problem in China was rather “arrogant” compared to how they treated other markets. Samsung has since issued a statement in which they “would like to apologize for any misunderstandings this may have caused the Chinese consumers due to an unclear communication in the process.”
In the meantime if you are so inclined you can check out the video above which was the video Zhang recorded of his Note 7 smoking.